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upstart writes:

A sneak peek at Earth's eventual fate:

Roughly 5 billion years from now, our Sun will end, not with a bang but with a whimper. That's when it finally burns through all the fuel in its core and puffs outward into a red giant, swallowing all the inner planets of our Solar System in the process, including Earth. But no star has ever been caught in the act of gulping down a planet this way—until now. Astronomers have spotted a white-hot flash from a distant star in our Milky Way galaxy and concluded that it came from the final stage of this process, according to a new paper published in the journal Nature. Yes, it's a literal "Death Star," announced on the eve of Star Wars Day (May 4).

[...] This process only occurs a few times a year in the Milky Way. Astronomers have observed the early stages of the process (planets so close to their host stars that they will inevitably be engulfed when those stars expand) along with the aftermath of this stellar evolution (when the stars have puffed up and seem to have peculiar properties, such as their rotational speed or chemical composition). But scientists have never witnessed the actual devouring. That's what makes this discovery so exciting, according to co-author Kishalay De, an MIT postdoc: This is the first direct evidence of a crucial stage of stellar evolution.

[...] De was poring over data from the Zwicky Transit Facility (ZTF) at the Palomar Observatory in California about three years ago, hunting for the telltale brightening (by a factor of a few thousand times over the course of a week) that marks a nova. Such explosions occur when a white dwarf steals matter from a companion star. De spotted a star brightening by a factor of a few hundred times over the course of a couple of weeks. He quickly checked out observations of the same star taken by the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. But the spectrum revealed that the composition and temperature of the gas surrounding this star was nothing like a nova. "This source appeared to be surrounded by a bunch of cold gas," De said. "We were seeing signs of molecules that can only exist at cold temperatures."

upstart writes:

Boring Company Gets Approval to Expand Las Vegas Tunnels to 65-Mile Network:

Las Vegas city officials have approved The Boring Company's request to expand its planned network of underground tunnels. The Las Vegas Loop will now feature a total of 69 stations and 65 miles, or 104 kilometers, of tunnels.

The Boring Company tweeted the news yesterday evening, following a meeting with the Clarke County Zoning Commission yesterday morning. The Las Vegas Loop was set to feature a combined 34 miles, or 55 kilometers, of tunnels and had stations that predominantly ran along the Las Vegas Strip. The Boring Company then asked in March to expand the Las Vegas loop, with the newly approved expansion adding 18 new stations and about 25 miles, 40 kilometers, of additional tunnels, according to a tweet from the county's official account yesterday.

[...] "This is a 100% developer funded project that will reduce traffic trips from our surface street public roadways, it will provide folks another easy and convenient alternative to get around, and as part of our revenue sharing agreement with the Boring Company, they will end up paying the City for use of our right of way," Las Vegas Executive Director of Infrastructure Mike Janssen told Gizmodo in an email. "So, I am excited to see the project continue to grow."

Attorney Stephanie Allen, representing the Boring Company, told county commissioners at yesterday's meeting that the Las Vegas loop currently has 2.2 miles constructed with 5 operational stops—four at the Las Vegas Convention Center and one at Resorts World. Allen further told commissioners that 1 million passengers have ridden through the network so far, with peak ridership in one day reaching over 32,000.

"The more opportunities we have on this map, the more opportunities for success with this system," Allen said during the meeting.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Meta's ad business slapped with interim measures in France over suspected antitrust abuse:

More regulatory woes for Meta: France's competition watchdog has announced interim measures on the adtech giant — saying it suspects it of abusing a dominant position in the French market for ads on social media and across the broader (non-search-related) online ads market.

It's ordering Meta to suspend application of the current criteria it imposes for granting ad verification partnerships; and giving it two months to define and publish new rules for accessing and maintaining viewability and brand safety partnerships which the Authority specifies must be "objective, transparent, non-discriminatory and proportionate".

Meta must also have a transparent access procedure for the partnerships that is not based on an invitation it sends, the order also stipulates.

The antitrust intervention follows a complaint by Adloox, a French ad verification platform that sells anti-ad-fraud and brand safety services. It complained to the Autorité de la Concurrence about Meta's conduct between 2016 and 2022, accusing the company of denying it the same kind of access to its ecosystem that some of its competitors have been granted, harming its ability to provide its services.

Adloox claims Meta discriminatorily denied it access to the aforementioned viewability and brand safety partnerships — despite providing such access to other companies in similar circumstances.

It also accuses Meta of abusing a dominant position by imposing unfair access conditions by providing only partial access to its ecosystem. And its complaint asked the Autorité to impose interim measures intended to force Meta to provide the sought for access.

upstart writes:

As big as a football field and heavier than 200 elephants, de-orbiting the International Space Station represents a monumental challenge:

[...] Drift into the wrong part of the Pacific Ocean in eight years, and you might be in for a shock. Tearing through the sky will be some 400 tonnes (880,000lbs) of metal, set aglow by its re-entry through the atmosphere. This raging inferno will crash into the ocean, across an area maybe thousands of kilometres in length, signalling the end of one of humanity's greatest projects – the International Space Station (ISS).

The ISS has been orbiting the Earth since construction on it began in 1998. It has hosted more than 250 visitors from 20 countries since its first crew arrived in November 2000. "The space station has been a huge success," says Josef Aschbacher, the head of the European Space Agency (Esa), one of the more than a dozen partners in the programme. It has been a boon for international collaboration, not least between the US and Russia, who partnered shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union. "It is really one of the big international victories," says Thomas Zurbuchen, Nasa's former head of science.

But much of its hardware is decades old, which could eventually see the station become dangerous or even uncontrollable in orbit – a fate that befell the Soviet Union's Salyut 7 space station in 1985, requiring two cosmonauts to revive the tumbling station. "We really don't want to go through that again," says Cathy Lewis, a space historian from the National Air and Space Museum in the US.

To prevent such a catastrophe in space from happening once more, the space station will be deorbited in 2031, bringing it through the atmosphere to safely splash down in the Pacific Ocean. This will be the largest re-entry in history and, in March, Nasa asked Congress for funding to start development of a "space tug" that might be needed to perform the task – a spacecraft that can push the station back into the atmosphere. Kathy Leuders, head of Nasa's human spaceflight programme, later revealed it was estimated the tug vehicle would cost just shy of $1bn (£800m).

upstart writes:

New process significantly speeds up 2D transistor production:

A recent MIT paper proposes a new method to "grow" 2D transistors on top of wafers, potentially speeding the production of ultrathin computing materials. The study claims to solve the heating and assembly problems of other methods, possibly opening new avenues for semiconductors.

Manufacturers like Intel, Samsung, and TSMC continually find ways to make ever-smaller transistors to guarantee ongoing increases in processing power each year. TSMC and Samsung have started 3nm semiconductor production as Intel looks forward to counting transistor size in Angstroms, while talk has also shifted to "2D materials" that are only a few atoms thick.

[...] One problem with building the 2D material molybdenum disulfide is heat. Growing some of its components requires temperatures over 550 degrees Celsius, but silicon wafer circuits start decaying beyond 400. Normally, manufacturers graft the 2D material onto the wafer after its production, often leading to imperfections.

The researchers instead grew the material directly onto the wafer with a new kind of kiln that separates part of the cooking process. A high-temperature zone processes the sulfur, after which it flows into the lower-temperature region where the molybdenum and the wafer are kept below 400C. The system leads to more uniform surfaces and faster production.

While the prior method could take an entire day to grow a layer, the new technique can grow a layer in under an hour. The improvement could enable growth across larger surfaces, and the researchers plan to explore stacking layers.

Journal Reference:
Zhu, J., Park, JH., Vitale, S.A. et al. Low-thermal-budget synthesis of monolayer molybdenum disulfide for silicon back-end-of-line integration on a 200 mm platform. Nat. Nanotechnol. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-023-01375-6

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Entertainer Ed Sheeran has been found not guilty of infringing on four chords used in both his song and in Marvin Gaye's hit, "Let's Get It On". The same four-chord sequence is used in a lot of songs and at a key point in the trial a musicologist testified that the same four-chord sequence has been used in popular songs many times prior to Gaye's 1973 hit. The trial took place in Manhattan in New York and the jury took only three hours to reach a unanimous decision. The two songs featured at the trial also have very different lyrics and melodies as well as different use of the common four chords. While the decision does not form a legal precedent, it is likely to affect similar cases in the future.

During her closing argument, Farkas said the case never should have been brought and that Sheeran was "unjustly accused" of copying from "Let's Get It On."

"We all benefit from artists being free to create and to build on what came before them," Farkas said, warning the jury that a verdict against Sheeran would mean "creativity will be stifled for fear of being sued."

--ABC

Also

"I am just a guy with a guitar who loves writing music for people to enjoy," he added. "I am not and will never allow myself to be a piggy bank for anyone to shake."

--New York Times

hubie writes:

Researchers show the positive impacts of musical activities to counteract brain ageing:

Normal ageing is associated with progressive cognitive decline. But can we train our brain to delay this process? A team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), HES-SO Geneva and EPFL has discovered that practicing and listening to music can alter cognitive decline in healthy seniors by stimulating the production of grey matter. To achieve these results, the researchers followed over 100 retired people who had never practiced music before. They were enrolled in piano and music awareness training for six months. These results open new prospects for the support of healthy ageing. They are reported in NeuroImage: Reports.

Throughout our lives, our brain remodels itself. Brain morphology and connections change according to the environment and the experiences, for instance when we learn new skills or overcome the consequences of a stroke. However, as we age, this ''brain plasticity'' decreases. The brain also loses grey matter, where our precious neurons are located. This is known as ''brain atrophy''.

Gradually, a cognitive decline appears. Working memory, at the core of many cognitive processes, is one of the cognitive functions suffering the most. Working memory is defined as the process in which we briefly retain and manipulate information in order to achieve a goal, such as remembering a telephone number long enough to write it down or translating a sentence from a foreign language.

[...] The participants were randomly assigned to two groups, regardless of their motivation to play an instrument. The second group had active listening lessons, which focused on instrument recognition and analysis of musical properties in a wide range of musical styles. The classes lasted one hour. Participants in both groups were required to do homework for half an hour a day.

upstart writes:

Always Be Closing – deals to grab that sweet, sweet renminbi:

The US semiconductor industry wants to have its cake and eat it, or rather it wants to have continued access to the huge Chinese market despite Washington's ongoing campaign to limit Beijing's access to advanced chip technology.

This latest turn in the chip wars is due to concern among US chipmakers over the rules governing what investments companies will be able to make in China. These need to be clearer, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), so that the companies know where they stand.

The SIA wants clear "guardrails" regarding the rules Washington plans to attach to the subsidies it will dole out as part of the CHIPS Act funding designed to boost semiconductor manufacturing in America.

US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo last year warned that companies receiving CHIPS Act cash would be forbidden from building advanced technology plants in China for a period of 10 years, and would only be allowed to expand any mature node facilities in China for the purpose of serving the Chinese market.

In an interview with Bloomberg, SIA president and CEO John Neuffer claimed that China was the semiconductor industry's biggest market: "Our view is that we need to play in that market."

The SIA said it just wants "clear rules of the road" so that what the US government deems a national security concern is well defined and the companies are able to take heed and plan ahead accordingly.

It isn't just US companies that are unhappy with strings attached to CHIPS Act funding. Semiconductor giant TSMC is said to be seeking up to $15 billion in subsidies to help build two chip fabrication plants in Arizona, but has expressed concerns about rules that may require it to share profits from the fabs with the US government as well as provide detailed information about its operations.

The 10-year ban on Chinese investments is a bone of contention for Samsung Electronics and SK hynix too.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Multiple sites have been reporting that former Audi CEO, Rupert Stadler, will plead guilty for his role in the 2015 emissions scandal where Audi and VW software was modified to evade emissions testing. The proprietary software embedded in the cars was modified to detect when the cars were being operated in testing conditions and modified the vehicle's operation to reduce emissions enough to pass the inspection. However, during normal operation, they polluted like crazy, up to 40x the NOx shown during testing conditions. The plea deal he has been offered to him in this trial which started 2020 is expected to be a €1.1 million fine and serve a suspended sentence of up to two years. Stadler has spent several months in pre-trial detention to prevent him from interfering with witnesses further.

Remember Dieselgate? It's been nearly a decade since a whistleblower outed Volkswagen and its sister brands in 2015 over tech invented in 1999 that was designed to fool emission testing. Despite the company facing fines worldwide, having involvement in further probes, and being forced to buy back affected cars, the automaker and its problem-era executives are still facing legal backlash.

The scandal has cost those automakers tens of billions so far. There was an initial attempt to blame only low level employees. However, as the trial shows there was more to it than that and that plans came from the highest levels. Further documents show that the emissions software had been in cheat mode for many years.

• Engadget: Former Audi CEO Rupert Stadler will plead guilty to Dieselgate involvement
• New York Times: Former Audi Chief to Plead Guilty in Emissions Scandal
• The Drive: Former Audi Boss Set to Confess for Role in VW Dieselgate Scandal
• VOA: Ex-Audi CEO to Plead Guilty Over 'Dieselgate' Scandal
• The Verge: Germany charges ex-Audi CEO for alleged role in Dieselgate
• Deutsche Welle: Former head of Audi to confess in 'dieselgate' fraud trial

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Google will remove secure website indicators in Chrome 117:

Google announced today that the lock icon, long thought to be a sign of website security and trustworthiness, will soon be changed with a new icon that doesn't imply that a site is secure or should be trusted.

While first introduced to show that a website was using HTTPS encryption to encrypt connections, the lock symbol is no longer needed given that more than 99% of all web pages are now loaded in Google Chrome over HTTPS.

These also include websites used as landing pages in phishing attacks or other malicious purposes, designed to take advantage of the lock icon to trick the targets into thinking they're safe from attacks.

"This misunderstanding is not harmless — nearly all phishing sites use HTTPS, and therefore also display the lock icon," Google said.

[...] The lock icon will be changed in Chrome 117 with a "variant of the tune icon," a user interface element commonly linked to app settings and designed to show that it's a clickable item.

[...] This move was first announced almost two years ago, in August 2021, when the company revealed that secure website indicators are no longer needed and would be removed from Google Chrome's address bar since over 90% of connections are made over HTTPS.

​"When HTTPS was rare, the lock icon drew attention to the additional protections provided by HTTPS. Today, this is no longer true, and HTTPS is the norm, not the exception, and we've been evolving Chrome accordingly," Google said.

[...] It's worth noting that Google Chrome will continue to alert users of insecure plaintext HTTP connections on all platforms.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The bid includes large players such as Airbus Defence and Space, Eutelsat, and SES:

A consortium of nearly every major European satellite company announced Tuesday that it plans to bid for a proposed satellite constellation to provide global communications. Essentially, such a constellation would provide the European Union with connectivity from low-Earth orbit similar to what SpaceX's Starlink offers.

The bid, which includes large players such as Airbus Defence and Space, Eutelsat, SES, and Thales Alenia Space, comes in response to a request by the European Union for help in constructing a sovereign constellation to provide secure communications for government services, including military applications.

[...] At present, Europe estimates the cost of this constellation at about 6 billion euro and desires it to be ready to provide global coverage by the year 2027. Both the budget and the timeline for this project are likely very ambitious, given the amount of coordination needed and the unlikelihood that Europe's Ariane 6 rocket will have the spare launch capacity to get hundreds of satellites into low-Earth orbit starting in the mid-2020s. The Ariane 6 rocket will not debut until 2024 at the earliest.

However, European officials felt as though they had to make this move. Fundamentally, the continent faced a difficult choice. Europe seeks to remain a major player in spaceflight activities, which increasingly includes satellite-based communications. However, European officials did not want to be beholden to Elon Musk and his Starlink constellation, which already provides secure global communications like those to be delivered by IRIS². European government leaders are already wary of relying on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket for the launch of some if its satellites. Officials were similarly disposed toward Amazon's Project Kuiper constellation.

fliptop writes:

The agency continues its post-quantum cryptography push as it looks to create guidance for all sectors:

The latest step in post-quantum cryptography guidance is helping organizations identify where current public-key algorithms will need to be replaced, as the National Institute of Standards and Technology continues its push to fortify U.S. digital networks ahead of the maturity of quantum computing.

A new draft document previews—and solicits public commentary on—NIST's current post-quantum cryptography guidance.

Current goals outlined in the working draft include helping entities locate where and how public key algorithms are utilized in encryption schemes, developing a strategy to migrate these algorithms to quantum-resilient substitutes and performing interoperability and performance testing.

[...] A major theme of the document is to help organizations understand the security architecture in their networks so that they firmly grasp where post-quantum security measures will need to be implemented and where to prioritize modernization. NIST also aims to compile a definitive inventory of software vendors to support post-quantum cryptography migration.

[...] The new guidance follows NIST's ongoing effort to finalize its quantum-resistant algorithms in 2024 after identifying four in 2022.

Originally spotted on Schneier on Security.

Related: 2023 Will See Renewed Focus on Quantum Computing

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

My wife just SMS'd me this, since I've never had one of those Tweeter things . . .

From JMS on Twitter . . .

BABYLON 5 ANIMATED MOVIE coming from Warner Bros. Animation & WB Home Entertainment! Classic B5: raucous, heartfelt, nonstop, a ton of fun through time and space & a love letter to the fans. Movie title, release date and other details coming one week from today.

#B5AnimatedMovie

JMS posts . . .

And just to be clear, this brand new original animated movie is already finished and in the can. So it's 100% real, happening, and coming out very soon.

Not what I imagined or wanted, but I'm not opposed to it. I would very much like to know more about the original story plan before JMS had to use some of his "trap doors" due to cast changes.

What animated movies would you like to see made? Alternatively, are there some stories that you think an animated movie would spoil as far as your are concerned? [JR]

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

Photonic circuits are a very promising technology for neural networks because they make it possible to build energy-efficient computing units. For years, the Politecnico di Milano has been working on developing programmable photonic processors integrated on silicon microchips only a few mm2 in size for use in the field of data transmission and processing, and now these devices are being used to build photonic neural networks:

"An artificial neuron, like a biological neuron, must perform very simple mathematical operations, such as addition and multiplication, but in a neural network consisting of many densely interconnected neurons, the energy cost of these operations grows exponentially and quickly becomes prohibitive. Our chip incorporates a photonic accelerator that allows calculations to be carried out very quickly and efficiently, using a programmable grid of silicon interferometers. The calculation time is equal to the transit time of light in a chip a few millimeters in size, so we are talking about less than a billionth of a second (0.1 nanoseconds)," says Francesco Morichetti, Head of the Photonic Devices Lab of the Politecnico di Milano.

"The advantages of photonic neural networks have long been known, but one of the missing pieces to fully exploit their potential was network training.. It is like having a powerful calculator, but not knowing how to use it. In this study, we succeeded in implementing training strategies for photonic neurons similar to those used for conventional neural networks. The photonic 'brain' learns quickly and accurately and can achieve precision comparable to that of a conventional neural network, but faster and with considerable energy savings. These are all building blocks for artificial intelligence and quantum applications," adds Andrea Melloni, Director of Polifab the Politecnico di Milano micro and nanotechnology center.

Originally spotted on The Eponymous Pickle.

Journal Reference: Sunil Pai et al, Experimentally realized in situ backpropagation for deep learning in photonic neural networks, Science (2023). DOI: 10.1126/science.ade8450

Related: New Chip Can Process and Classify Nearly Two Billion Images Per Second

Original Submission

upstart writes:

A baby girl who developed a life-threatening brain condition was successfully treated before she was born:

Her parents signed up for a clinical trial of an in-utero surgical treatment to see if doctors could intervene before any of these outcomes materialized. It seems to have worked. The team behind the operation now plans to treat more fetuses in the same way. Other, similar brain conditions might benefit from the same approach. For conditions like these, fetal brain surgery could be the future.

The baby's condition, known as vein of Galen malformation, was first noticed during a routine ultrasound scan at 30 weeks of pregnancy. The condition occurs when a vein connects with an artery in the brain. These two types of vessels have different functions and should be kept separate—arteries ferry high-pressure flows of oxygenated blood from the heart, while thin-walled veins carry low-pressure blood back the other way.

When the two combine, the high-pressure blood flow from an artery can stretch the thin walls of the vein. "Over time the vein essentially blows up like a balloon," says Darren Orbach, a radiologist at Boston Children's Hospital in Massachusetts, who treats babies born with the condition.

The resulting balloon of blood can cause serious problems for a baby. "It's stealing blood from the rest of the circulation," says Mario Ganau, a consultant neurosurgeon at Oxford University Hospitals in the UK, who was not involved in this particular case. Other parts of the brain can end up being starved of oxygenated blood, causing brain damage, and there's a risk of bleeding in the brain. The extra pressure put on the heart to pump blood can lead to heart failure. And other organs can suffer too—especially the lungs and kidneys, says Ganau.

Fetuses with the condition are thought to be protected by the placenta to some degree. But that changes from the moment the umbilical cord is clamped at birth. "All of a sudden there's this enormous burden placed right on the newborn heart," says Orbach. "Most babies with this condition will become very sick, very quickly."

Journal Reference:
Darren B. Orbach, Louise E. Wilkins-Haug, Carol B. Benson, et al., Transuterine Ultrasound-Guided Fetal Embolization of Vein of Galen Malformation, Eliminating Postnatal Pathophysiology [open], Stroke, 2023. DOI: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/STROKEAHA.123.043421

Original Submission